Sept. 02, 2003 - 21:07 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Bloomin' Tuesday

And I guess that is the best I can say about this one. We were trying to catch up and do the things today we could have done yesterday, but, things just weren't open yesterday being a holiday and all. Heather and I don't go beating around the countryside on holidays if we can help it. We did have a nice day yesterday even so.

Replenishing green goods and all was a small adventure. Doesn't seem to be much in the newspapers to roil my ire or maybe I just missed something. Somewhere in my thinkbox I have an entry on labor. Sure missed a good day to do something like that -- but then everyone has a word or two for our Labor Day on said day. But it needs a bit of thinking before writing I guess.

It is sad though, the days when we respected the coal heaver, steel mill worker, foundryman -- people who labored hard and honestly but weren't often treated as people should be by owners and management. The women who worked in sweat shops in our northeast and the textile mill workers in the southeast. People who spent their lives on the edge of hunger doing the work that had to be done but were considered a bit less than human, some of them went home dirty from their jobs, some of the ladies in the garment sweatshops and the mill ladies contracted lung ailments, our miners who had an old age (if they made it that far) suffering with silicosis from rock dust, coal miners who worked under unbelievable conditions.

Those and many other folks are the ones who shed blood and lived in fear but still brought forth unions and collective bargaining, achieved the eight hour day, five day week, time and a half for overtime work. On through the whole list. Looking at it realistically, for the most part whatever good a workman has, vacations, benefits and all came from the endeavors of the unions and the rank and file of the members. Along the way blood was shed, lives were lost, lives and the lives of the members of the families of union workers were destroyed.

So here am I, going off on Labor when I didn't intend to. I remember sales clerks for the hoity-toity M_y Company who made pitiful wages and had to dress as the management felt befitting workers for such an elite establishment. They struck for a year, while people I knew walked into the store to do their "rightful" thing. End result, the clerks got a small increase in wages, not enough to catch up for a years loss of wages. Which is the way it happened to most of us, what we gained was to the benefit of those who came after.

Mom and I used to shop there as the ambience was great, never pausing long enough though to be approached by a sales person. The decision of what to buy was made in that store, but the purchase was made across the street at J. C. Penney's where the quality, and style were essentially the same and prices much lower. Most working folks couldn't afford to buy at places like that and certainly Mom couldn't afford more than just a bit of indoor window shopping there.

Nowdays we have "professional" people and people who are called management by the owners, some of those who don't believe in unions. So the drops of blood from them in the ungodly hours they work and the low wages they get are because they have been snowed and and move with nose to grindstone, sacrificing family time, time off such as union folk get and many other good things -- because they are management or engineers or whatever owners decide to call them. Some of our top engineers do not get paid a fraction of their actual worth I think.

Sure, there have been abuses by the unions, I know that. They have been wrong too, absolutely. But when considering the treatment workers received at the hands of owners from the almost the beginning of time -- union abuse pales in comparison. And after all the means to do so was taught to them by example, no?

Maybe sometime I will take the time to detail and quote sources of some of the history of labor here in our country, the Ludlow Massacre, Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, the absolute control of workers by Pullman in an area near Chicago, the list is endless. In recent times there have been workers who couldn't get out from their workplaces because the fire doors were locked. It still happens.

I am retired, but I remember and remember the history I have read.

Other than that is has been just another Bloomin' Tuesday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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